Disco Comps: S&D

The Disco Years Vol. 1, 2, and 4 (Rhino). 1 and 2 are the shamelessly obvious hits, and pretty thoroughly enjoyable. 4 is, too, but its focus on Chic-derived stuff gives it a consistency rare in these kind of comps.
Classic Salsoul Mastercuts (Mastercuts). solid, really well chosen stuff from the style's best label. warning: on my CD, there's a really audible tape-stretch on Instant Funk's "I've Got My Mind Made Up" which mars it something awful.
Larry Levan's Paradise Garage (Salsoul) and Larry Levan's Classic West End Records Remixes Made Famous at the Legendary Paradise Garage (West End). The first has six good tracks, but the second is the BOMB, including the long versions of Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face" and Taana Gardner's still-devastating "Heartbeat." Also, Live at the Paradise Garage (West End), a 2CD set of a reel-to-reel tape of a performance, is DJ alchemy in action: Levan turns mostly ordinary records into something really fantastic.
Disco Not Disco (Strut). worth it for Loose Joints' "Tell You (Today)" alone. (note: DND2 suxor.)

The Magnus Opus collections are well worth seeking out too, if you want a bit of electro-disco-funk crossover stuff, or if you`re looking for the full length patrick cowley mix of "i feel love".

Leroy Burgess: The Anthology, Vols. 1 & 2 (Soul Brother). I am a Burgess phreek, but there are some undeniable must-have moments of genius on these -- Black Ivory's Mainline, Class Action's Weekend, Convertion's Let's Do It, Fonda Rae's Over Like a Fat Rat, the Logg tracks. (Burgess produced, arranged, wrote, sang, play keyboards, etc... in varying respects.)

Both volumes of Disco Juice (Counterpoint). Note: these two discs were packaged together last year for release in the States. Landspeed released it, but the actual packaging is ultra shitee compared to the Counterpoint releases. These two discs compile some of Patrick Adams' and Peter Brown's productions/projects for their Harlem-based indie labels (Adams also did tons of work for labels like Prelude and MCA). Neither disc is 100% exciting, though tracks like Disco Juice, Get Down Boy, New York Moving, etc make me dizzy with glee. Biggest gripe: where is Cloud One's Atmosphere Strut? Note one: this is not the same Peter Brown who released records on TK Disco. Note two: Adams was behind Burgess' Black Ivory and worked with him on and off for years after BI.

Both volumes of Jumpin' (Harmless). Fran mentioned the first volume, which I think is pretty essential. The second volume is almost as solid, and it's one of the few places you can get Martin Circus' absolutely bonkers Disco Circus (one of my favorite singles of all-time). Also has Inner Life's Moment of My Life, another Burgess-related nugget o' gold. Oh -- do an A/B with Northend's Tee's Happy (from the first volume) and Madonna's (later) Holiday and see if you don't hear some similarity. (There really ought to be a Tee Scott comp in the vein of Larry Levan's priceless West End Remixes disc that Michealangelo mentioned above.)

Choice: A Collection of Classics (Azuli). Both Frankie Knuckles and Francois Kevorkian have released comps in this series. Knuckles' is a two-disc mix; Kevorkian's is a two-disc track-in-whole pkg. The first disc of Knuckles' set is spectacular -- outstanding mixing and equally solid selection. Bumblebee Unlimited (more Burgess and Adams magic), Billy Ocean, Change, George Duke, Convertion (even more Burgess hehe). Kevorkian's has some must haves, like David Joseph's You Can't Hide, Shalamar's Right in the Socket, and some later house cuts like Baby Wants to Ride, Koro Koro, etc.

The Loft comps are spotty as hell, though a few tracks are full of delights (the full version of TW Funkmasters' Love Money, the male version of Is It All Over My Face, Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa, the instrumental version of Mystery of Love.

The Disco Spectrums, despite being directed at hardcore cratedigging types, have their moments. Idris Muhammad, Eddie Kendricks, Blair, etc. Dmitri from Paris' Disco Forever is similarly full of mostly decent rarities. However, one of the non-mixed discs has Universal Robot Band's Barely Breaking Even (yeah, Burgess again), the superior boogie record.

100% agreed on everything said above. There's a two-disc Original Salsoul Classics that I'd have to re-obtain immediately if I lost it, and the two Disco Not Discos will always hold a special place in my heart, despite the fact that the second volume is a dropoff from the first.

Thanks for the info all!

Give Your Body Up: Club Classics & House Foundations, Vol. 1

Tracklisting:
Funky Sensation -- Gwen McCrae
Over Like A Fat Rat -- Fonda Rae
Can't Play Around -- Lace
What Can I Do For You? -- LaBelle
Always There -- Side Effect
Why Leave Us Alone -- Five Special
Is It All Over My Face (Female Vocal)
Loose Joints Free Man (Disco Version)
South Shore Commission Bad For Me
Dee Dee Bridgewater I Love Music -- The O'Jays

Give Your Body Up: Club Classics & House Foundations , vol. 2
1. Just Us - Two Tons O' Fun
2. Baby I'm Scared Of You - Womack & Womack
3. Somebody Else's Guy - Jocelyn Brown
4. Touch And Go - Ecstasy, Passion & Pain
5. Love Is The Message - MFSB
6. Running Away - Roy Ayers Ubiquity
7. Now That We Found Love - Thirld World
8. Bra - Cymande
9. Down To Love Town - The Originals
10. Over And Over - Sylvester

Give Your Body Up: Club Classics & House Foundations vol. 3

1. Give Your Body up to the Music - Billy Nichols
2. Weekend - Phreek
3. You Got Me Running - Lenny Williams
4. I'll Do Anything for You - Denroy Morgan
5. Runaway Love - Linda Clifford
6. Girl You Need a Change of Mind - Eddie Kendricks
7. I Want to Thank You - Alicia Myers
8. Clouds - Chaka Khan
9. Vertigo/Relight My Fire - Dan Hartman
10. Music Got Me - Visual

These came out on Rhino in 1995, they are cheap and readily available.

Not that I only enjoy disco or dance music. My personal reason for getting into disco, was that round 1995 I was bored with house and techno and decided to check the roots: disco. An added benefit of the genre that at the time it had not been documentend at all. I was on the 313 list (Detroit Techno) and someone posted a list of the records Derrick M

Yours
Jan

Not that I only enjoy disco or dance music. My personal reason for getting into disco, was that round 1995 I was bored with house and techno and decided to check the roots: disco. An added benefit of the genre that at the time it had not been documentend at all. I was on the 313 list (Detroit Techno) and someone posted a list of the records Derrick May was influenced by (Billy Cobham, Disco Circus, ...) and then the internet came along and downloaded a Paradise Garage playlist and started to buy vinyl. Reading all the smallprint on the vinyl and finding your favourite producers (Levan, Gibbons, Adams, Carmichael) and composers (Russell) and labels (West End, Prelude, Salsoul, Emergency ....)

Enfin
Here we are

Yours
Jan

Not that I only enjoy disco or dance music. My personal reason for getting into disco, was that round 1995 I was bored with house and techno and decided to check the roots: disco. An added benefit of the genre that at the time it had not been documentend at all. I was on the 313 list (Detroit Techno) and someone posted a list of the records Derrick May was influenced by (Billy Cobham, Disco Circus, ...) and then the internet came along and downloaded a Paradise Garage playlist and started to buy vinyl. Reading all the smallprint on the vinyl and finding your favourite producers (Levan, Gibbons, Adams, Carmichael) and composers (Russell) and labels (West End, Prelude, Salsoul, Emergency ....)

Enfin
Here we are!

Yours
Jan

Then, of course, there's this...

damn today this made perfect sense :

http://www.discogs.com/release/580714

so, that leads to the obvious question from someone who needs more of this excellence: who else has made disco based mixtapes with re-edits etc
prefereably releases that are available in shops ?

oh, and i got the TK Disco mix that Bill Brewster compiled for EMI last year (which is absolutely brilliant of course !) ..

mark e, try this one out ...

DJ MILO - Live At The Cat Club 1979
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=17590

A-MAZING mix. mostly if not all re-edits.